The World Cup 2026 is facing a growing crisis of online toxicity, according to a new report released by Hope Not Hate, an activist group investigating the impact of algorithms on social media. The research, based on an analysis of over 300,000 X (formerly Twitter) posts during the tournament, reveals a disturbing trend: racist abuse targeting England players was amplified by the platform’s recommendation algorithms, driving engagement and ultimately, profit.
The organization argues that X’s ‘recommender algorithm’ prioritizes content that generates strong reactions, effectively pushing toxic material into millions of user feeds. Posts triggering anger and outrage are shown to remain active for significantly longer durations, contributing to increased advertising revenue for the platform.
“X is actually benefiting from this hate,” Patrik Hermansson, senior researcher at Hope Not Hate, stated. “It drives engagement on its platform and effectively uses its algorithm to elevate and show it to more of its users.” He explained that the algorithm’s focus on provoking reactions doesn’t adequately account for the volume of abusive content, leading to a cascade effect.
The report details how Hope Not Hate discovered that a significant number of posts targeted England players – including Bellingham, Saka, and Mainoo – were subjected to intense abuse. Furthermore, Bukayo Saka and Kobbie Mainoo experienced the highest proportion of targeted content compared to the total number of posts, highlighting the severity of the issue.
The research also uncovered a disturbing pattern: in replies to high-profile posts, a significant number of instances of abuse were amplified, suggesting the algorithm doesn’t adequately address the propagation of harmful content.
Researchers examined how abuse gathered in the replies to individual high-profile posts on the platform. In response to the report, an FA spokesperson acknowledged that all players have the right to play without being exposed to hateful, discriminatory, and distressing content online. They added that the organization wants Ofcom to use its existing powers under the Online Safety Act more effectively, including outlawing the algorithms, and designating major sporting events as ‘high risk’ to mitigate the problem.
The group collected posts mentioning England players by name or X handle, and replies to player and team accounts. They also collected posts mentioning Team England and other related keywords. Irrelevant posts were filtered out.
The researchers used artificial intelligence to sort the data, based on human-labeled examples. Different forms of racism were identified, as well as “far-right narratives” and hateful slogans. Samples were checked manually for accuracy. Posts were counted as abuse on a yes-or-no basis, rather than graded by severity.
Hope Not Hate called on UK’s media regulator Ofcom to use its existing powers under the Online Safety Act more effectively and address predictable spikes in hate, suggesting a potential solution would be to downrank posts attracting large volumes of abuse. They also cited a new partnership with police and footballing bodies before the World Cup to tackle online abuse. The researchers stated that the current attempts to tackle online abuse often focused too heavily on what happened after a racist post had already been seen, and that X doesn’t take racism seriously enough.
Hermansson concluded: “X doesn’t take racism seriously enough. We’ve seen it for a number of years now. There is no change or improvement.” He added that social media companies already had the tools to alter how their algorithms recommended content, particularly during periods when abuse is surging, and that this is a necessary step to curb the harmful impact of the platform.
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Source: BBC Football
